“Someday we’ll find it
The Doomsday
Connection
MODOK, AIM and me!
La, la, la, la, la,
la!”
Not many people know this, but that was Jim Henson’s
original lyrics for “Rainbow Connection”. He was intrigued by Mobile Organism
Designed Only for Killing (MODOK) and Advanced Idea Mechanics (AIM) and wanted
to spread their gospel.
Seriously.
Anyway, you’ll notice that the above image isn’t of a
Champions comic, rather it’s the 1977 Iron Man annual. Comics are a lot like
professional wrestling or hip hop, when something isn’t doing very well, the
powers-that-be try to pair them along with something that is successful. For a wrestler,
it might be to have him form a tag-team partnership with someone more popular.
Or they can feud with someone who has more juice. For a hip hop artist, they
can guest on a more popular artist’s record. Or be photographed with him or
her.
You want someone that isn’t popular to seem as though they
are popular. The quickest and best way to do that is by having them orbit around
something that is cool.
I’m not sure how much more popular Iron Man was than the
Champions in 1977. Tony Stark has been around Marvel for 15 years and was a star
of one of their flagship books, the Avengers. He had cache and the Champions
did not. My guess is that Marvel editors decided that the Champions needed to
be around more popular heroes. So, without a lot of setup, they guest starred in
the Armored Avenger’s annual.
Written by Champions writer Bill Mantlo and penciled by
former Champions artist George Tuska, it wasn’t if the creative team needed to
get their arms wrapped around the team. Both men knew who the Champions were,
so they were dropped right in the action.
Iron Man was in California investigating an AIM laboratory and
was looking for MODOK. Iron Man battles through a bunch of robots, but can’t
find the big-headed, small-bodied man. He realizes that the majority of the
West Coast is now in a blackout and he fears that MODOK is syphoning off energy
for some dastardly plot. He decides that it’s a good idea to pay a visit to the
Champions Headquarters and see what his old colleagues, Black Widow and Hercules
have to say.
I guess Tony Stark has always kinda been a dick because even
though he says that the Champions haven’t responded to his radio signal, he
decides to bust through their HQ anyway. There he runs into the Ghost Rider,
who is rightly pissed off that this happened. Being that this is a comic book,
they get into a fight. Angel, Hercules and Ice Man are about to kick Iron Man’s
ass (they saw GR go flying through a wall) when Black Widow tells everyone to
chill out. They do.
Iron Man breaks out a mini film projector—it’s so cute and
tiny—and he explains to his new buddies that MODOK is serious business and that
they need to find him before the world blows up. Iron Man suggests that they
split up because there are three places that MODOK could be. Angel, Hercules
and Natasha decide to head out to Redwood National Forrest.
(Look at that thing, how quaint. It's like being in grade school and IM is your lazy teacher and it's filmstrip day!)
Here Angel flies around for literally a minute and talks
about how good it feels to stretch his wings. OK WWIII. Hercules and Widow
start flirting and it looks as if the Prince of Power is going to seal the
deal. But those AIM jerks are back again and they start firing on our heroes.
Hercules is so taken by the beauty of his surroundings that he rips up a
gigantic redwood tree and starts bashing AIM cronies with it. Eventually the
trio gets snared.
Ice Man, Ghost Rider and Darkstar go to an undersea AIM base
near San Francisco. There, they learn that evil corporation is doing
unspeakable experiments on fish and turning them into monstrous killers. They are
attacked by another set of AIM goons and when Ice Man tries to help Ghost
Rider, Johnny Blaze acts like a royal prick.
Darkstar ends up getting knocked out. Stop me if you’ve
heard this before, Ice Man loses focus when he sees that happening to Laynia
and he gets coldcocked. Eventually the trio gets captured.
Iron Man heads to the Mojave Desert where he happens upon a
Franciscan Mission and a gigantic monk. Turns out the monk works for MODOK and proceeds
to beat the crap out of Iron Man. Unlike the Champions, Iron Man leaves the
monk—who is walking around talking about how he beat up Iron Man and that he’ll
be running AIM in less than a week.
Somehow the Champions all escape their messes and jump in
their Championcrafts and head to where Iron Man is going: Nevada. He goes back
to the place that he destroyed at the beginning of this issue and guess who’s
there? MODOK! Turns out while IM was destroying his lab, MODOK was invisible
and waiting for him to leave. Just like James Comey used to do when President*
Trump drop by.
MODOK explains his plans and starts fighting Iron Man when
the Champions come busting in. MODOK decides that enough is enough and blows
his entire mountain lair up, seemingly crushing the heroes. But Iron Man has an
adaptor and plus one side into his armor (through the yellow circle in his
chest) and the other into the Doomsday Chair (I forgot to say that this is the
thing MODOK created to blow up the world). The DDC transfers so much energy
into Iron Man’s armor that he is able to use it to blow off the mountain that Hercules
was holding up. It reminded me of this:
(I loved this issue and this cover, look at how pissed off Hulk was. And this was much cooler because the Molecule Man dumped an entire mountain on these guys and Hulk held it up. Incredible!)
We are on the second to last page and The Champions are
like, “Phew, I’m glad we’re safe but what about MODOK?” And Iron Man’s like, “Oh
yeah. That dude.” He fires his repulsor rays at him to “stabilize” the bad guy
but ends up blowing him up. After dropping the Champions off, Iron Man walks
away and thinks that he should probably go to his factory and see how everyone
is doing down there.
This was a pretty good issue and I think it’s because the
Champions were NOT the focus of it, which doesn’t say much for this team. Ghost
Rider was the only real asshole in this issue (aside from Tony Stark) but Bobby
didn’t whine so much about Darkstar, the Angel didn’t act like an entitled
prick and Hercules and Black Widow had their nice moment too.
I would read more about this team, if I was a kid who picked
up this comic off the rack and had no idea who these Champions. They were just
eclectic enough to make it work in this Annual. I’d give it four disco-shirted
Angels.
I'll start it off with this guy, because he loves to get the party started:
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